Dave was in a bind. His top architects were all idle because his drafters were behind on their work. Clients were going to get their plans late.

Dave explained that his drafting department was a little short handed, and he needed to do some hiring. We both knew hiring new people and bringing them up to speed to be productive, would take at least 90 days.

So, what does the company do in the mean time? Just sigh and accept lateness? I asked Dave what was causing this backup, exactly.

“Circumstances,” he said, “Too much client work, and a shortage of people in the drafting department.” Simple, right?

No.

There are excellent companies that handle spikes and swings in client work, and turn out high quality work quickly and reliably. Whenever someone attributes any sort of result (especially a bad result) to “circumstances” you can be sure they’re in denial.

Those excellent companies face “circumstances,” too — they just handle them differently.

Here is how you can rise above circumstances and achieve reliable and excellent results.

I asked Dave if this circumstance had happened before. What caused this sort of back-up in drafting? Could it be predicted?

Well, yes, it had happened before.

So, what sorts of things cause these backups?

We found three basic causes.

1. Some of the architects were afraid to say “no” to client requests for last-minute changes.

2. Others wouldn’t push clients hard enough to get key decisions made on time, which caused delays — then they wouldn’t tell the client “your slow decision making is delaying the project.” So the clients were expecting their plans to arrive on the original timeline despite not hitting milestones.

3. In other cases, other architects would get their own work done, but not give it to the drafters until the last minute.

Dave and I spoke to Ken, the head of drafting. What could he do, if he knew in advance that there was going to be a large amount of work coming that would all need fast turnaround?

Ideally, Ken said, with 1-2 weeks’ notice he could line up some temporary help. The key thing, said Ken, is to keep the same drafter on each project — trying to get 4-5 drafters to work simultaneously on a late project, or adding even a second drafter to help a first when a project is already late, just makes it later — you create coordination problems.

Ken’s experience is almost universal. Among members of the Project Management Institute there’s a saying, “adding people to a late project, makes it later.”

But Ken didn’t think he could ask for things to be different. He thought he was supposed to muddle through, push people at crunch time, and have high turnover.

I pushed back on Dave. ”How do you want Ken to handle this in future?”

Dave wanted Ken to hold the architects accountable, and to take initiative to hire temporary help when he needed to, while sticking to a budget. Ken wasn’t doing any of those things.

I then asked Dave the tough question: “How are you contributing to Ken’s behavior?”

Ouch.

On reflection, Dave realized he had always done one of these things — defended the architects (so Ken was unsupported when trying to hold them accountable), or taken the problem away from Ken (teaching him to be passive), or told Ken to “suck it up” — Dave had never actually authorized Ken to hire temporary help and had never given him a budget.

Our fix involved these elements:

Track projects more closely earlier, to predict drafting demand

Hold architects accountable to say “no,” to push clients to make decisions on time — or tell them their project was delayed, and to turn in their work as soon as it was done.

We accomplished this by training them to say “no” and to push clients, and we made each architect accountable for the profitability of his projects — so delays that cost the firm money or drove up drafting costs, would show up in their personal performance.

Anybody who feels like they are a “victim of circumstances” would benefit from the same analysis Dave did — look at the patterns that predict the circumstances, and look honestly for how your own behavior has contributed to those circumstances.

As the authors of the book “How Did That Happen?” put it, the real question every leader should ask themselves is, “How did I let that happen?”

BY STUART WATSON

BY JON SHADEL

The technology industry is always in flux. And this rapid rate of change poses challenges to companies ranging from nimble startups aiming to make their mark to established organizations fighting to remain relevant. This is particularly true in the competitive digital display market, where an Oregon company has been at the forefront of nearly every major breakthrough in the last three decades.

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Robert S. Wiggins has joined Lane Powell as a Shareholder in the Corporate/M&A Practice Group. Wiggins is a well-known lawyer, entrepreneur, and investor with more than 30 years of experience leading and advising established and emerging companies in the Pacific Northwest. Wiggins will focus his practice on offering outside general counsel services, including general corporate and board representation, business transactions and capital events.